Angry Birds Red and Black

Everyone loves receiving a card that makes them smile or gives them a giggle and that is what we are hoping to see at The Male Room, the only other restriction is that it must be suitable to send to a male relative or friend.
I was going to go with a stamped 'joke' type card, but couldn't quite find the right one at the right time. So, following on from a card I posted earlier, these little guys are almost guaranteed to make you smile

My daughter, who was escaping back to Uni earlier this week, took both of these cards back to send to some of her friends on the swim team, she thought that those boys would love them, I hope so!

They were so simple to make, the red one I found a card on the internet to CASE  but the black one I created myself using an image of the black angry bird on Google.
I was trying to take my photographs when look who wanted in on the action! This is Sam, posing with the angry birds, the only birds he's going to catch these days!

Two for Three

Three challenges inspired me to make the following two cards, I don't very often blog two at a time but these go together. Both cards are for the Grunge challenge at Addicted To CAS, I am totally addicted to Stampin' Up's Gorgeous Grunge stamp set and so any excuse to use it I grab!
This was my first attempt, CASEd from a card I found on the internet and pinned, here

I have used the colour combination from the challenge at Stampin' Royalty, I love the blue accent on the yellow and orange.

I was hooked on this corner stamped design and wanted to make another one and so, this time using the colours from The Colour Throwdown

I made this card

The pink is very pale , but you an see it better in the close up of the humming bird below.  I used a stencil and sponged the three colours to give the idea of iridescent plumage, adding some dazzling Details to enhance the effect and a tiny irridescent gem for his eye. After fussy cutting him out I used dimensionals to pop him up and added the sentiment fro Sassy Salutations. This time I've rounded all four corners.

Hope you like my CAS Grunge cards and enjoy the rest of the weekend!

A Box of Trees

For the stash Challenge at 52CCT Deborah, our lovely hostess for April is going out in style, glittery style that is, as we want to see you Christmas projects with glitter. (don't you just love glitter!) We have all got some, I'm sure and once you've made your card the whole family will be sporting some in their hair, clothes etc, even the cat! Guaranteed! Well, that is what will happen in my house

After my twisted easel card, earlier in the month I got carried away with more complex card designs and, thanks to a workshop from my good friend and fellow teamie, Jacqueline, I came up with this. These cards in a box are everywhere on the blogs right now and they are really quite simple to make 

Mine is a glittery forest of Christmas trees in a box, which all fold flat for easy posting.

All the trees are dusted with glitter and one special tree in the middel(can you spot it?) is loaded with baubles and ornaments with a golden star on the top  (bling to you and me). The box is made from a single A4 sheet and I've added embossed facing panels to look like a forest in the snow.  I had so much fun making this, I'm going to make more.  Better late than never, I entering the challenge at Completely Christmas again, where Anything Goes.
 I already made another box card for Mothers Day, which I gave to my Mum (the original from the workshop) and I've seen some fabby Easter ones on the internet. There's more of these to come.!

Smile, it's a Minion

What makes me smile? Minions make me smile- every time! I love the Despicable Me films and those little yellow guys, Dave, Kevin, Stuart,and all the others, make me feel happy. So, when I saw the theme at Less Is More I knew what I was going to make.  The actual CAS design took a little bit of thinking about but here it is

I used squares, rectangles and circles, cut and punched and then it was just a matter of assembling the parts. I know this is quite a different style for LIM but it was definitely a case of less is more.

Other things that make me smile are my children (they are Minion fans too), crafting, friends, sunny days, holidays, Christmas...I could go on and on!

Screeching Tyres

Just a quick post from me this morning to show you the new sketch challenge at CAS Colours and Sketches this week.

 I slimmed the three panels right down into strips of washi tape, as long as we can still see the sketch you are welcome to play around with it - rotate it, flip it, alter the shapes, whatever you are inspired to create, as long as it's also CAS.
I've used Rev Up The Fun again, and as I said used washi tape, mostly so that I could also join in with the challenge at The Paper Players, which runs until Friday. The tyre tread is stamped but the red stripes are the tape.

I've added Dazzling Details to the motorbike, I know you can't see it well in the photograph but it does give a metallic effect to the red ink. Finally I added some twine and a black gem, still keeping it masculine. These days I seem to be making a lot of male cards!

3, 2 1

This one stumped me for a while! At 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown Deborah has a theme for us to work with this week- The 12 Days Of Christmas, isn't that a clever idea?

 But, what to do when you don't have any suitable images? Many crafters will look for digital images and I know there are lots out there which, if you are an expert colourer (is that a word?), will look absolutely fabulous, but I've never really got to grips with them. So, I decided to improvise with my Flock Together stamp set. I knew there was a little partridge-like bird...

 and I thought the two sitting birds could easily be 2 turtle doves..

Of course there are two little hens in the set, which with a little bit of crafting magic, can become....

three french hens

All I needed was a tree to complete my 12 Days Of Christmas themed card. I added some washi tapes - I wanted to add the music one to keep with thee theme, but it looked better combined with the other two. I've stamped a Christmas greeting inside.

Hope you enjoyed the story of how my card evolved, for that is surely what it did, and are inspired to give our challenge a go even if you don't have quite the right thing in your stash!

Back In Black

I have had this card inside my head from when I first saw this gorgeous WoodWare stamp

A crisply stamped, fully black silhouette, with no colour all, just monochrome. Not even sure if I need the sentiment but it did seem to balance the card.  Then I saw this week's colour challenge from CAS Colours and Sketches. I would have left it as it was, but I know we are sticklers for the colour rules at CC&S and so to fit in with

I have added a two-tone bow, using the two shades of grey from the challenge

I think I will use it as a sympathy card and take off the bow when I do. This is so CAS (without the bow) I am really pleased (I did stamp it a number of times before finally achieving the black I wanted, with no missed bits, grey bits, smudges, off centre images, half stamped sentiments ..... so it wasn't as quick and easy as you might imagine)

There's Only One You

God Morning!  I am up very early this morning as I had to take my son to work (he's a lifeguard at our local swimming pool). I was going to nip back into bed as I'm on holiday but the day was too good to waste and so I thought I'd post today's card for the challenge at The Male Room instead. The original theme for the challenge was Man's Best Friend, but we've extended it to include all pets, as long as your card is suitable for a male. I stuck with the MBF idea and made another card with my Paisley Pets stamp set.

 It is a variation of a card I made last week, using the Hardwood background stamp to make a picket fence (I even used the scraps I had left from the previous card, how's that for thrifty?) but I've given it a masculine twist with my dog in the grass card, rather than the flowers I used previously. I thought the sentiment went well with the image.  It's all popped up on dimensionals and my dog has two small gems for his eyes.  Instead of embossing clouds as I did before this time I've sponged them in using a scalloped circle, love creating flffy white clouds in this way. The grass is cut by hand.
Do hope you'll join us in the challenge.

Twisted Love and Joy

How silly of me, I seemed to have used the colours from this weeks challenge at 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown last week! I wonder if that was subconscious...? Here they are

Here is last week's card

See what I mean?

So, here is my card for this week's challenge, and I chose to make a twisted easel card and enter a couple of  my regular Christmas challenges Completely Christmas, where anything goes and Crafty Hazelnuts Christmas Challenge, for making it square, and a new challenge I have found Christmas Fun Challenge blog, a monthly challenge where the cue is a Christmas card for a man (I think this is quite masculine with it's geometric design).

I stamped the Off The Grid image in River Rock, added the fussy Cut Love and Joy, in Tempting Turquoise and used a grey washi tape for the inside of the card. The second shade of blue I used for the matting.  There are various bits of bling, including pearl centres added to the snowflakes on the washi tape and dimensional sparkly white snowflakes on the grid.
A very contemporary card for a colour scheme which lends itself to modern designs or traditional ones.  Do have a look at the work from the rest of the DT, you'll see w.hat I mean.  I always think you should send these twisted easel cards to a card-maker as they only make sense to them!

Images from Indonesia

CAS Colours and Sketches have a sketch for your challenge today, and it's a good one!

Wondering about the title? A very long time ago, BC (before children) I was lucky enough to have an extended stay in Jakarta, where my husband was working.  We lived in a small house in a garden filled with exotic flowers and, in the evening, these little green gekos would come out and cool down on the white walls. Just like these ones..

You will notice that I forgot to add the corner element to the main panel, so check out below. My little geko has some bling to represent his sparkly scales and he comes from a set called Paisley Pets, stamped using my markers so that I could add touches of colour to his, mostly, green body. The leaf is a stick on. With or without? What do you think?

Snowflake Sketch

24 hours later and I make it... my DT post for 52 {Christmas} card Throwdown that is. All was well until an 'emergency' message from my daughter who's on holiday with a friend in Dubai. All is well again, but as you can imagine getting my post up on the blogs took a back seat. It will teach me to be more organised and schedule my posts, and that's what I'm spending today doing!
It is a sketch week at 52 and this is what we have for you

 I have followed the sketch almost to the letter, just moving the position of the bow, but you can play around with it as much as you like, as long as we can still see the elements in there.

I started with the snowflake DP, one from my stash, used the Memory Box snowflake die that my hubby got me for Christmas and then followed the sketch..easy! True to my heart it's quite CAS. I am entering the Anything Goes challenge once again at Completely Christmas, well, why not!

Along The Fence

I have handed over my hostess hat to Jacqueline for the month of April at CAS Colours and Sketches and she is starting us off with three fab colours

Love this combination. Don't worry if you don't have Stampin' Up colours, just use the nearest shade you do have.  This time, I took my inspiration from a card I saw on FB, it was only possible because I was able to borrow the Hardwood background stamp from the lovely Jacqueline, as I don't own it....yet!

The flowers, which I fussy cut, are from Vintage Vogue and the leaves are from Stippled Blossoms.  I used the cloud embossing folder, also from Stampin' Up. It may be a little to fussy for your taste in CAS, but it will pass for me.

Intergalactic Greetings

OK, OK whose crazy idea was it to have Sci-Fi as the challenge over at The Male Room this week?  Oh, yes, that would be mine. I don't know why I did it, I don't own any alien or monster stamp sets, not into digital stamps and, quite frankly, all out of ideas until just now. I do enjoy some good sci-fi movies and I think a lot of our male family and friends, young and not so young are into this particular genre, so I thought it would be a great idea.  Good job I have some great teamies over at the challenge blog as they have all risen well to the challenge!
Here is my card..

Of course I had to make the sentiment on my computer and you will notice that I have used the very versatile owl punch once again to create my aliens.  The DP I found in my stash, it actually has wine glasses all over it (cleverly hidden here) but I thought it looked a bit space-like.
I do hope you have a go at this one, it is a fun theme, perhaps mostly for cards for the boys, but you lot in blogland are always amazing me with your ideas!

Rev Up and Side Step

I thought I would give the side-step card a bit of a masculine, CAS makeover this morning. A side step card is the latest challenge from Technique Time Tuesday, where there is a fab video tutorial to follow if you've never made this type of card before,  The only tricky bit is getting the measurements right, but if you can use a ruler (!!) no problem!
There are so many gorgeous side step cards around on the internet, and some fantastic ones created by my fellow DT members on the challenge blog, and as I said my idea was to keep it clean and simple.  For me, they work best with a single stamp set, to coordinate the images and that's what I've done here with Rev Up The Fun

The colour choice of black, white and red was very intentional. I stamped the car in Real Red and then stamped off twice to give the impression of movement

I used the tyre tread stamp as a border and then just stamped Off The Grid (oops, guess that counts as a second stamp set!) directly onto my card, using my Stamp-a-ma-jig to get it exactly straight and
central.
Really pleased with the way this turned out. I think I will enter it into the one for the boys challenge at Make My Monday too.